Nintendo eShop Update: Game Boy Tetris!

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The original portable puzzler phenomenon returns, just in time for Christmas.

By Lucas M. Thomas

It's a Christmas miracle! Nintendo's unleashed an avalanche on us today, faithful eShop followers -- eight different downloads in total spread across the company's various digital storefronts. The headliners are the surprise re-release of the original Game Boy version of Tetris, the surprise spontaneous release of the free Swapnote application for 3DS owners -- since it wasn't announced in this morning's press release – and the highly anticipated arrival of Wayforward's Mighty Switch Force. (Which might have been a third surprise, except we did get advance notice about that one a few days ago.)

In addition to those big names, five more titles have dropped across DSiWare and WiiWare. Truly, Nintendo has no pity on a weary eShop games reviewer who had to also drive his baby three hours to grandma's house today. But no worries! Let's do this thing! eShop Update time!

Kicking things off with DSiWare as always, we first come this week to Doodle Fit. This is a sketchy puzzler (get it, sketchy) about scribbling little block shapes into position inside various outlines. It's tangrams, essentially, similar to what DSiWare has previously seen with the games 505 Tangram and Puzzle Fever.

I liked both of those past takes on this idea for DSi, and I like this one as well – the stylus controls and notebook-like art style give Doodle Fit enough of its own feel to make it stand out from those established competitors. It's satisfying to take a look at an outline, then take a look at the available shapes you have to fill it, then lay stylus on screen to draw out your answer instead of "grabbing" a block and spinning it into place, as Puzzle Fever did.

Doodle Fit isn't quite as challenging since you don't have to spin your pieces, so that could either be a turn-off for puzzler fans who want something tougher or a positive point for newcomers just getting into this type of game. Undoubtedly positive, though, is the game's novel visual options – though everything looks like you're using a pencil in a school notebook by default, you can use the options menu to change the entire look of the game to resemble a chalkboard, a sci-fi movie, an old '80s computer and more any time you want. That's snazzy, and more puzzle games should employ that idea – since it doesn't damage the underlying gameplay at all.

Doodle Fit's previously been made available in places like Apple's App Store, so I'll insert my default caveat here that buying this on iPhone is probably cheaper – if that's an option for you. But I like it in DSi form, and five bucks isn't too much to ask for what you'll be getting here. Feel free to fit these doodles into your DSi or 3DS with my recommendation.

Next up we have the latest release in the on-going Rytmik series of digital synthesizers, Rytmik Retrobits. This is the kind of download that probably isn't going to catch your attention here in the eShop Update roundup – because if you were the type of person who would buy Rytmik, you would already know that from your prior purchase of the original Rytmik, or Rytmik: Rock Edition, or Hip Hop King: Rytmik Edition.

They're all essentially portable music studios on the go, the kind of non-game software that only aspiring musicians or established chiptune composers would be interested in. And I'd consider recommending this to an uninitiated newcomer, but it's the kind of thing that's hard to get into without a full tutorial or previous synthesizer experience under your belt. The Rytmik releases do a better job at letting the unmusical among us craft some audio creations that still sound pretty good, but it would take a lot of patience and practice to get comfortable enough to create a true masterpiece.

It has been done, though! And for that niche audience that's been using the previous Rytmik downloads to make truly excellent music (hit up Google or YouTube for some great examples), Rytmik Retrobits will become another trusted tool in your audio arsenal. This one's packed with old-school gaming sound bytes the likes of which we used to hear back on the 8-bit NES, so it's certainly going to be the chiptuner's friend.

Here's something new for the Twilight fan in your life – a hidden object game centered on investigating vampires. If the genre name doesn't ring a bell, hidden object games are the ones that present you with terribly messy and cluttered screens full of junk and ask you to pick out a set of specific items from amongst the mess – like the Where's Waldo? book series. Chronicles of Vampires: Origins does a little something new with this concept, though, in that it gives a bit more storyline support to why you're sorting through all this junk in the first place.

The game casts you as an investigative reporter named Linda, and her sorting through mountains of garbage is always in support of her overall investigation – she might be gathering clues (which justifies tapping on lots of things on the touch screen), or taking pictures of different points in a crime scene (again, justifying the action), or any of a number of other motivations.

It's a subtle thing, to be sure, but I actually liked having some reason behind hunting the hidden objects in this adventure – most other games in this same genre are wholly random, giving you clutter for clutter's sake, and those always break down into mindless screen-tapping for me. Here, though, there's some purpose – and I stayed more engaged in the process.

Chronicles of Vampires: Origins isn't the prettiest game, as its static 2D backgrounds often seem "JPEGy" with visual compression artifacts screwing up the scenery. It's also not the most robustly animated vampire tale either, especially with protagonist Linda – she seems to adopt the same awkward pose and shocked facial expression no matter what she's in the middle of doing.

But, overall, this is something a little different for the hidden object genre – and what it does differently, it does well.

And if one hidden object game wasn't enough for you, how about another? Ho, ho, ho! Santa's here to deliver a second helping of the same genre, on the same day. (I'm sure Chronicles of Vampires' publishers must have loved that.)

The Vampire people can rest a bit easier with the knowledge that theirs is the superior game, though, as this quick Christmas cash-in is much more bland. As I just finished explaining above, hidden object games aren't much fun when there's no motivation behind hunting the objects – and here there's none. It's just "Hey, here's a room full of Christmas stuff. Get tapping!"

It's not entirely terrible, as the artwork is nice and there are a few thoughtful gameplay additions – the items from The 12 Days of Christmas, for example, are extra hidden objects throughout the game's array of scenes (so you can hunt for the 12 pipers piping, 10 lords a' leaping and all the rest over the course of the whole "quest," with a running tally keeping track of your progress.) There are other, different types of gameplay mixed in to add some variety too – like memory games, jigsaw puzzles and the like.

Really, this is the same kind of holiday-themed grab bag of casual gaming that we saw two months ago with Halloween: Trick or Treat. (It's from the same team, of course.) As I concluded with that game, though, the eight-dollar price here is too steep to justify the content you'd be getting – so stay away from this one unless you're really desperate for something new to keep your kids quiet on the three-hour ride to grandma's house.

DSi Shop: 800 Points | 3DS eShop: $7.99

That covers this week's new releases for DSiWare, but we've still got more reviews for you. Turn the page to get the verdict on the latest WiiWare and 3DS Virtual Console releases.